Does the Budget Deal Bother You?

1 week ago

RUSH: The budget deal. It's a big deal. It's a two-year budget deal. We talked about this yesterday. And remember, I had an idea. You know, there's a lot of people wondering about (laughing), "What is going on?" All of this spending, combined with the tax cuts, deficits as far as the eye can see -- and it doesn't seem like it's very Republican. It doesn't seem like it's very conservative. And they indeed they shut down the government for a couple hours and they got it reopen last night when the deal was agreed to.

Trump signed it early this morning. So essentially it's a two-year budget deal. The main thing that I think -- and I admit this is cynical. But I think it's relevant. I think a lot of Republicans voted for this thing just to ensure they will not be accused of shutting down (laughing) the government for two years now. Do not doubt me on this. Do not. Being accused of shutting down the government is something they think they're gonna be guilty of whether they have anything to do with it or not every time it's charged, and this is how they generally do it.

They kick things down the road to avoid dealing with them, and this kicks the government shutdown two years down the road. To heck with whatever else happens here. There's massive amounts of defense spending, but discretional spending is skyrocketing. It's going through the roof. There's not even any pretense here at balancing a budget. There's not even any pretense here of (chuckling) making the government smaller. There not even a pretense. The conservative caucus, the Freedom Caucus in the House, is beside itself.

"This is not what we ran on. This is not what we campaigned on. We ran out there and every time Obama wanted to spend a dime on something, we complained about it. Now nobody says a word when this spending goes through the roof except for Rand Paul." (interruption) Well, he was being vilified... Look, Rand Paul is not clean and pure as the wind-driven snow on this. Now, everybody's quoting this sound bite of his, which is good. He's saying there isn't any...

Conservative Republicans exist when the Democrats are in power. When the Republicans are in power, conservatism vanishes. Now, I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty much what he said. But, look, he also voted for the tax cut. Now, in a lot of people's view, the tax cut is a budget buster because the tax cut is gonna short the government $1 trillion, they say. Which is bogus. That's not gonna happen. But the way these people in Washington score it, it is. They don't score things dynamically.

They look at the tax cut, how many taxes are being cut, how many dollars, and they subtract that from how much money Washington got the previous year, and they think Washington's gonna be down $1 trillion. Therefore, the deficit is going to be up and the national debt gonna be up $1 trillion. Well, that's not be the case. That's gonna be more money rolling into Washington than these guys can count. But they don't score it that way. My point is, with everybody acclaiming that the tax cut was gonna raise deficit, there's Rand Paul right in there voting for it.

So while he may be scoring big on trying to stop this vote last night because it's budget busting, you could say that he busted the budget by supporting the tax cuts, the way they look at it. Now, here's Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz is a Republican from Florida. He was on Cavuto Coast to Coast on the Fox Business Network this afternoon, and Cavuto said, "Do you think the gain of tax cuts will overcome the apparent hypocrisy of a party that talks big on containing spending but has now spent on the issue?"

GAETZ: We better hope so. I didn't vote for that spending, but I think that at the end of the day people will vote based on whether or not they believe their personal economic conditions are better or worse. If you were to judge us today, people are doing better than they were doing in the Obama economy.

RUSH: They are. They are. So his point is -- and it's true to a point. We don't know what the dollars are gonna be, but this tax cut is going to result in much more revenue flowing to Washington than anybody in the swamp is counting. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but its dynamic scoring versus static, and they don't score things at the CBO or anywhere else in a dynamic way. They just run the numbers, and they've concluded that Washington's gonna have $1 trillion less this year than it had last year.

That automatically means a deficit of at least $1 trillion this year. Well, that's not gonna happen! Because more jobs are gonna be created, more taxpayers are gonna be created, and more taxpayers -- even at lower rates -- are gonna be paying more in taxes. The government is collecting records amount of money already! Record amounts of money already. Just through every form of taxation, revenue is at record levels. They announce it every quarter, and it's through the roof.

But the question... You don't have to answer this. Like if people are on hold, and if you don't want to talk about this, fine. But if you don't want to answer this, I'm putting it out there. "Does this budget bother you? If so, why? And if not, why not?" Because in the textbook of conservatism, every bit of this is a no-no except for the military spending. Every bit of it's a no-no. Every bit of this could be chalked up to major, huge hypocrisy. "You guys, you ran on balancing the budget.

"You run on reducing spending, and you get into office and, my God, we're spending more in a two-year budget than we ever have." Folks, as I said yesterday, "The budget never gets smaller." I don't care who's in office. I don't care who's in power. I don't care who's where doing what and why, the budget never gets smaller. It never has. The national debt has continued to grow. It has never gotten smaller/been reduced. The annual deficit? It's a seesaw. Goes up and down. But it has been balanced since 1995.

We did have a surplus, remember, in the late nineties that the Clintons wanted to turn into... I forget what it was. But we did have a budget surplus for a year or two, and had it stayed in the Treasury, we would have a balanced budget, but Clinton used it as... What was it, the defense dividend or some such thing? (interruption) Yeah, "the peace dividend." Right. The peace dividend. They lopped it into some... I forget what. But Washington never spends less money, in total. It's never happened. The national debt has never gotten smaller.

And while all this has been happening, we have been listening to doom and gloom preached to us every year about it. And there hasn't been... The doom and gloom that's been predicted related to budgeting hasn't happened. Now, we could be... As I so astutely observed yesterday, we could be in the middle of it (laughing) finally mattering here, and we can't see it. The dragon could be at the door and we don't know it. The monster could be lurking out there and we just don't see it.

But the monster, we've been told, it's always there and with every new budget, the monster's gonna eat all of us. And here we still are. So I'd just the like to know, does this bug you? It bother you. If so, why? If not, why not. There isn't any wrong answer, so don't think you're gonna get your head chewed here if... That only happens if you're really factually wrong about something. But your opinion on this is not gonna be ridiculed, lambasted. So don't be frightened about any of that.

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